What Do Comedy and Mythology Have in Common? The Hero's Journey

Writers: Take the main ingredients of an adventure story, add a creative, biting twist, and leave your audiences splitting their sides. And begging for more.

A good story takes you somewhere, points you towards the way back home, and leaves you with a small gift that you can keep by your side for a long time afterward.

My most challenging moments in developing a scripted dramedy series involve figuring out what gift I want to leave my viewers with. What do I want them to take away to their kitchen, while they’re daydreaming during lunch, or on their morning commute the following day, after they’ve finished watching that last episode from the night before? The gift can be a larger life lesson, an enduring feeling, or a new perspective on the world around them.

The hero’s journey is one of the most powerful and effective ways to craft that gift and deliver it to your audience. Originally conceived by American mythologist Joseph Campbell, the concept of the hero’s journey revolves around a protagonist or hero who is called to an adventure (often involving a series of difficult tasks) and to transform him- or herself through the process. This structure for stories in mythology, folktales, and film has stood the test of time, appearing in the story of Adam and Eve of the Bible, the Russian folktale of Vasilisa the Beautiful, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and, of course, that of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

But good storytellers don’t just direct famous films and pen classic novels. The outlines and scripts behind some of our favorite – and bittersweet! – comedy and dramedy television series are rooted in the hero’s journey, and they leave us with those little gifts over and over again. Here are a few of my favorite hero’s journeys to grace Hulu and Amazon over the past several years.

* Spoilers Ahead! *

Reservation Dogs

Paulina Alexis as Willie Jack, Devery Jacobs as Elora Danan Postoak, D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai as Bear Smallhill, and Lane Factor as Cheese in Reservation Dogs. Photo by Shane Brown/FX.

An FX Networks comedy series, Reservation Dogs traces the story of a group of four Native American teenagers trying to escape their Oklahoma reservation town to get to California. They scrape together the cash they need to drive their way to freedom by stealing and selling everything, from bags of chips, to scrap metal, to steaks from the local grocer.

But, of course, a messenger in the form of a spirit warrior appears to foil their original plan and calls on Bear Smallhill (played by D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai) to his adventure: to stay on the res and “fight for his people.” The spirit warrior is a total goofball that co-writers and producers Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi use to turn the stereotype of the stoic, ever-serious Native American on its head. Nevertheless, the hilarious horseman with love handles holds true to his role of calling Bear to do the tougher, more important work of becoming a warrior for his hometown.

In the case of Bear (and his buddies Elora, Willie Jack, and Cheese), this requires him to discover qualities in himself that were always there, but that he never took the time to develop and use for good. Through an encounter with Uncle Brownie (played by Gary Farmer), who is legendary for his epic bar fights in the 1980s, Bear uncovers some of his own strength, aggression, and enduring love for his family and friends in the difficult process. Nevertheless, there is unfinished business left by the end of Season One, when we see Bear waiting for Elora to pick him up so they can finally run away to Cali.

Here, Bear apprehensively refuses the call to the hero’s journey, much in the same way that Luke Skywalker initially refuses the call of Princess Leia to join the rebellion against the Death Star. But Bear’s inner conflict is palpable in the final scene of the season, and we can tell that there is still a lot left to this story. We have yet to see what our four protagonists must do in the face of the spirit world and its demands for personal and collective transformation, and I’m excited for what Season Two has in store for them.

Fleabag

Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Fleabag in the eponymous comedy series. Photo by Steve Schofield/Amazon Studios.

There’s nothing like the brutal humor of British millennial comedy to make you burst out laughing while your blood curdles. Named after the protagonist of the series, Fleabag (an Amazon original) follows the journey of a 30-something social misfit who has spent most of her adult life lying, hiding, and sleeping with random men to avoid the most demanding journey of all: learning to take responsibility for one’s life and love oneself and those around you for who they are. Unlike Reservation Dogs, where a human-like spirit appears to set the wheels of the plot in motion, Fleabag sets off on her journey via an encounter with a small sculpture made by her cruel and backstabbing artist godmother.

Fleabag tries to sell the sculpture for money she desperately needs (her hamster-themed café business, once shared with a deceased friend, is failing) because she doesn’t understand the value of the sculpture on a deeper level. Her plans to sell the artwork get thwarted, of course, but by invisible forces that are less tangible than the dream-time intrusion of a messenger figure. Through a series of smart plot twists and character development crafted by producer and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the sculpture makes its way back into the unsuspecting hands of Fleabag, and we discover, along with the protagonist, that it’s a model of her late mother’s naked form.

The trope of the good mother and her guidance for the female protagonist via a talisman or doll appears in many folktales, including one of my favorites, Vasilisa the Beautiful (also known as Vasilisa the Wise). In the beginning of the story, an ailing mother gives her daughter, the young maiden Vasilisa, a doll before she passes. The doll turns out to be a guiding figure embodying Vasilisa’s instincts and yet-to-be-discovered inner strengths as the maiden endures a difficult forest journey to find firewood. What Vasilisa eventually discovers is something way more awesome than kindling for the fireplace: her own willpower, aggression, and ability to trust her intuition.

For the decidedly-atheist Fleabag, the small sculpture of her mother’s nude figure serves as the guiding doll spirit. And that unknown inner strength is her capacity to love and value her relationships with her sister, father, and even a priest with his own fraught past. We might associate female promiscuity, selfishness, and financial instability as hallmarks of the liberated “modern woman” (a flashback in the series shows Fleabag and her late friend, Boo, singing about being modern women with a heavy smear of irony), but Waller-Bridge and her staff writers demonstrate that Fleabag’s initial stance in life really is maiden-like. It’s only when she returns “home” from her hero’s journey that she understands and values the love and emotional strength that were always within her.

The hero’s journey gives us many touching and heartfelt messages, best wrapped in brutally-honest comedy.

Vasilisa the Wise on her hero’s journey. Artwork by Ivan Bilibin, 1899.